UMass Memorial Life Flight

UMass Memorial Life Flight is the air ambulance service of UMass Memorial Health in Worcester, Massachusetts. It helps the region's most medically fragile patients get advanced care as quickly as possible. The service provides both air and ground critical care transport. The company says it is the region's only nationally recognized air ambulance service.

Life Flight became New England's first dedicated air ambulance program in 1982. Air Methods Corporation provides the pilots, mechanics and aircraft. The service connects nearly 900 critically ill and injured patients with care every year.

Life Flight serves critically ill or injured patients who need transfer between facilities, people hurt in the community, and people in rural regions who need urgent care. The helicopter is commonly used for patients who are hospitalized but need transfer to another facility, injuries sustained on mountains or in forests, and victims of traffic accidents and natural disasters.

Life Flight covers a service area from New Hampshire and Vermont in the north to Connecticut and Rhode Island in the south, and from Boston to Albany, New York. It operates from two bases, the flagship UMass Memorial campus in Worcester and Fitchburg Airport.

The helicopter is equipped with specialized medical equipment and is staffed by flight nurses and paramedics. They provide advanced prehospital care under the guidance of emergency medicine doctors who specialize in air medicine. Pilots have significant experience and special air ambulance training, and many trained with Air Methods.

The program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS). UMass Memorial is a founding member of the North East Air Alliance, a group of regional air medical professionals that share best practices in transport medicine.

Life Flight is an extension of the Level I adult and pediatric trauma center at UMass Memorial. Its flagship base is at the UMass Memorial campus in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Services

• Critical care helicopter transport
• Prehospital care
• Ground critical care transport
• Interfacility patient transfers
• Air ambulance service